Anthony Horowitz - Russian Roulette

We came to the end of another summer and I swore to myself that it would be my last at the dacha , that by Christmas I would be gone. And yet August bled into September and nothing changed. I was feeling sick and angry with myself. No only had I not escaped, I hadn’t even tried. Worse still, Ivan Sharkovsky had returned. He had left Harrow by now and was on his way to Oxford University. Presumably his father had offered to pay for a new library or a swimming pool because I’m not sure there was any other way he’d have got in.

I was in the garden when I first saw him, pushing a wheelbarrow full of leaves, taking it down to the compost heap. Suddenly he was standing there in front of me, blocking my path. Age had not improved him. He was still overweight. We were both about the same height but he was much heavier than me. I stopped at once and bowed my head.

“Yassen!” he said, spitting out the two syllables in a sing-song voice. “Are you glad to see me?”

“Yes, sir,” I lied.

“Still slaving for my dad?”

“Yes, sir.”

He smirked at me. Then he reached down and picked up a handful of filthy leaves from the wheelbarrow. I was wearing a tracksuit and, very deliberately, he shoved the leaves down the front of my chest. Then he laughed and walked away.

From that moment on, there was a new, very disturbing edge to his behaviour. His attacks on me became more physical. If he was angry with me, he would slap me or punch me, which was something he had never done before. Once, at the dinner table, I spilt some of his wine and he picked up a fork and jabbed it into my thigh. His father saw this but said nothing. In a way, the two of them were equally mad. I was afraid that Ivan wouldn’t be satisfied until I was dead.

That was the month that Nigel Brown was fired. He wasn’t particularly surprised. He was no longer tutoring Ivan, and his sister, Svetlana, had been accepted into Cheltenham Ladies’ College in England so there was nothing left for him to do. Mr Brown was sixty by now and his teaching days were over. He talked about going back to Norfolk but he didn’t seem to have any fondness for the place. It’s often interested me how some people can follow a single path through life that takes them to somewhere they don’t want to be. It was hard to believe that this crumpled old man with his vodka and his tweed jacket had once been a child, full of hopes and dreams. Was this what he had been born to be?

I was having dinner with him one evening, shortly before he left. Arkady Zelin had joined us. He had returned from Moscow that morning with Sharkovsky, who had flown in from the United States. Mr Brown hadn’t begun drinking yet – at least he’d only had a couple of glasses – and he was in a reflective mood.

“You’re going to have to keep up your languages, Yassen, once I’m gone,” he was saying. “Maybe they’ll let me send you books. There are very good tapes these days.”

He was being kind but I knew he didn’t really mean what he was saying. Once he was gone, I would never hear from him again.

“What about you, Arkady?” he went on. “Are you going to stay working here?”

“I have no reason to leave,” Zelin said.

“No. I can see you’re doing well for yourself. Nice new watch!”

It was typical of my teacher to notice a detail like that. When we were doing exercises together, he could instantly spot a single misspelt word in the middle of a whole page. I glanced at Zelin’s wrist just in time to see him draw it away, covering it with his sleeve.

“It was given to me,” he said. “It’s nothing.”

“A Rolex?”

“Why do you interest yourself in things that don’t concern you? Why don’t you mind your own business?”

For the rest of the meal, Zelin barely spoke – and when he had finished eating he left the room, even though we’d agreed to play cards. I did an hour’s German with Mr Brown but my heart wasn’t in it and in the end he gave up, dragged the bottle off the table and plonked himself in an armchair in the corner. I was left on my own, thinking. It was a small detail. A new Rolex. But it was strange the way Zelin had tried to conceal it, and why had it made him so angry?

I might have forgotten all about it but the next day something else happened which brought it back to my mind. Sharkovsky was leaving for Leningrad at the end of the week. It was an important visit and he much preferred to fly than go by road. During the course of the morning, I saw Zelin working on the helicopter, carrying out a routine inspection. There was nothing unusual about that. But just before lunch, he presented himself at the house. I happened to be close by, cleaning the ground-floor windows, and I heard every word that was said.

“I’m very sorry, sir,” he said. “We can’t use the helicopter.”

Sharkovsky had come to the front door, dressed in riding gear. He had taken up riding the year before and had bought two horses – one for himself, one for his wife. He’d also built a stable close to the tennis court and employed one of the gardeners as a groom. Zelin was standing in his overalls, wiping his hands on a white handkerchief that was smeared with oil.

“What’s wrong with it?” Sharkovsky snapped. He had been very short-tempered recently. There was a rumour that things hadn’t been going too well with his business. Maybe that was why he had been travelling so much.

“There’s been a servo actuator malfunction, sir,” Zelin said. “One of the piston rods shows signs of cracking. It’s going to have to be replaced.”

“Can you do it?”

“No, sir. Not really. Anyway, we have to order the part…”

Sharkovsky was in a hurry. “Well, why don’t you call in the mechanic… what’s his name… Borodin?”

“I called his office just now. It’s annoying but he’s ill.” He paused. “They can send someone else.”

“Reliable?”

“Yes, sir. His name is Rykov. I’ve worked with him.”

“All right. See to it.”

Maya was waiting for him. He stormed off without saying another word.

I didn’t know for certain that Zelin was lying but I had a feeling that something was wrong. Every day at the dacha was the same. When I say that life went like clockwork, I mean it had that same dull, mechanical quality. But now there were three coincidences and they had all happened at the same time. The helicopter had been fine the day before but suddenly it was broken. The usual mechanic – a brisk, talkative man who turned up every couple of months – was mysteriously ill. And then there was that new watch, and the strange way that Zelin had behaved.

There was something else. It occurred to me that it really wasn’t so difficult to replace a piston rod. I had been reading helicopter magazines all my life and knew almost as much as if I’d actually been flying myself. I was sure that Zelin would have a spare and should have been able to fix it himself.

So what was he up to? I said nothing, but for the rest of the day I kept my eye on him and when the new mechanic arrived that same afternoon, I made sure I was there.

He came in a green van marked MVZ Helicopters and I saw him step out to have his passport and employment papers checked by the guards. He was a short, plump man with a mop of grey hair that sprawled over his head and several folds of fat around his chin. He was dressed in green overalls with the same initials, MVZ, on the top pocket. He had to wait while the guards searched his van – for once, their metal detectors weren’t going to help them. The back was jammed with spare parts. He didn’t seem to mind though. He stood there smoking a cigarette and when they finally let him through he gave them a friendly wave and drove straight across to the helicopter pad. Arkady Zelin was waiting for him there and they spent the rest of the day working together, stripping down the engine and doing whatever it was they had to do.